


The Benefits of Merlot for One's Expressive Capabilities

by HermioneSpencer



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, I can't really tell you what this is?, I have no idea myself, One might call this crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7380925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HermioneSpencer/pseuds/HermioneSpencer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Delphine had intended to drink some wine and relax.  Her plans are interrupted by Cosima claiming that Delphine has something that belongs to the brunette.<br/>What could possibly happen?<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Benefits of Merlot for One's Expressive Capabilities

**Author's Note:**

  * For [SianRuns](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SianRuns/gifts).



> Wow, this took me far too long to write.  
> For SianRuns because a) it is her prompt and b) she's fantastic.  
> I hope you enjoy it!

Lying on my bed, long limbs stretching out on my mattress, I took a deep breath.  The music swelled from the speakers and I felt my heart get pulled with it.  I smiled and took a sip of the Merlot I’d so carefully saved, my free hand tapping against my thigh to the slow beat.

Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s sultry voices caressed my ears and I happily leant my head back against the headboard again, revelling in the chance to finally relax after the stress of the midterm exams that wiped me out.

I was so very tired, but not wanting to spill my wine all over my clothes and sheets, I turned to the side and placed the bottle and the glass on my bedside table.  I turned my music off, deciding it was time to get ready to sleep.

I needed to change.  Sleeping in my clothes was never going to be sensible, no matter how enticing it might seem at the time.  Shaking my head a little to clear the haze from the alcohol, I got up out of bed, stripped off my blouse and jeans, and was about to go and wash my face in the bathroom before changing into my pyjamas, when a loud triumvirate of violent knocks sounded on the front door of my shared apartment, making me jump.  My roommate Sarah had said that she wouldn’t be coming home tonight.

Assuming that she had changed her mind, I poked my head around my door to have a look at our shared kitchen counter, where her keys usually lay.  To my surprise, they were not there.  She almost always forgot them, but the smaller woman never admitted it.  They were always ‘purposefully left behind’, despite the fact that it meant I had had many a call when I was out at night, demanding I return to our building to let her in.

Often I wondered why I put up with the unfriendly façade Sarah nearly permanently projected to everyone around her, but there had been a couple of incidences in which Sarah had surprised me with how sensitive she could be.  Those rare moments had helped to create a tentative friendship.  Not to mention the fact that being her roommate meant that I got an excellent view of her best friend Cosima when she came round, and seeing as she often visited, as she lived just across the hall, I got a good look at her at least three times a week.

To my shame, I still hadn’t said a single word to her.  I found myself inexplicably tongue-tied every time I ended up around her, and it was easier to smile shyly at her every time I came out from my bedroom to refill my glass of water, or slip into the bathroom and turn the shower on when she was over than try to form words in a language I had tried so hard to master over the years.

To that poor girl, I must have been the thirstiest, cleanest girl she’d ever come across.

The three loud _thuds_ came again, forcing me to hurry up and open the door for Sarah.

Or, not Sarah.

I suppose it depends on how closely you look.

At that point, I was nowhere near drunk enough to mistake Cosima Niehaus for Sarah Manning.

 “Dude, give me back my furniture.”

She hadn’t looked up at me yet.  She was leaning on her shoulder against the doorframe, her head lolling forward, meaning she was looking at the floor. 

Reacting as quickly as I could, I jumped behind the door to hide myself.  Why I had thought it would be okay to answer the door in my underwear, I will never know.  I put it down to the wine, and told myself I mustn’t drink any more.

“Euh…” I stumbled, the brunette having that muting effect on me even after just looking at her.  I will constantly question why she had such an effect of my vocal chords.

She finally looked up at me, and she squinted.

“Hmm… you’re not Sarah…” she cocked her head to the side, one side of her mouth pulling up in such an endearing way my heart melted on the spot.  “Delphine, right?  Gotta say though, I am not gonna complain at these turn of events.  _You_ ,” she slurred, bringing a hand up, tapping a finger on the tip of my nose, “are _far_ prettier than Sarah.  This has made my evening far more enjoyable…” she trailed off, leaving me blushing and hot.

Only at that moment did I realise quite how fantastically drunk she was.  Her inebriation did nothing to stop her mouth, however.  “So, where’s my furniture?”

I blinked a couple of times, trying to understand the question’s deeper, philosophical meaning.  I shook my head, coming up with nothing.  Furniture was furniture, and that was that.

I tried to speak, ask her what furniture she meant, ask her what the furniture looked like, ask her why she thought I had it, ask her what her skin felt like after a session of sweaty, energetic sex, but of course, I couldn’t muster a single word. 

Maybe that was a good thing.

Looking in my eyes, she sighed.  “I forgot… you’re gorgeous, but you’re mute.  Oh well, I need to find this furniture before Rachel kills me.”

She bumped into the door – which I only just stopped from catching my bare toes – and almost fell into the main room of my shared apartment, looking around for, apparently, some furniture.  I wondered how she thought I would be hiding it in my tiny, shared apartment.  I wanted to speak, indignant at being called a mute, but I couldn’t fight my corner.  She had my phonation in a deadlock.

Still bemused, I watched her plod around the room for a few seconds, turning in pointless, wonky circles, trying to find this elusive furniture, but she frowned when, on her fourth rotation, she could see that there _was_ nothing, beside Sarah’s and my own belongings.

Dizzy, she swayed on her feet as she turned back to me, her eyes unfocussed.  She leant dangerously forward, and forgetting for a moment that I was still only in my underwear, I ran forward and stopped her from keeling over.

She had a hand gripping onto my bicep when I was once again reminded of my precariously denuded state.  Her eyes were levels with my neckline and I was in danger of revealing to her more moisture from my body than the sweat that was adorning my forehead.

“Euh… _Excusez-moi_... _La nudité est seulement pour les meilleures amis…_ ” I mumbled as I escaped from her strong grip, and ran towards my bedroom door, getting changed into my pyjamas as quickly as I could and finally wrapping myself up in my dressing gown, finding comfort in the extra layer between me and the rest of the world.  I stopped when I realise that those had been the first proper words that I had addressed to her before.

If French was the only language I could talk to her in, then I would have to work with that.  Foolishly, I thought that I could somehow teach her to understand me.

I spotted my wine glass on the bedside table, and drank as much as I could in one go, not savouring the flavour as I had before, wanting it only for the purpose it served in lowering my inhibitions.

I turned back to the main room to see if I could help her with her odd predicament, but found her standing in my doorway, grinning impishly and leaning her head to the side.  Eyes widening, I let out a small squeak of embarrassment.

“ _Qu’est-ce que vous avez vu?_ ” I choked out, pointing at my dressing gown and flapping my hand about like an imbecile.

Cosima clearly understood, her grin widening, possibly delighted that I was actually talking to her, albeit in French.  She slurred her answer.

“Dude, I totally saw enough,” she smirked, running her eyes up and down my body licentiously, stepping into my room, “but… I really need my furniture.”

I nodded stupidly.

“ _Oui_ , furniture.”  I wanted to kick myself.  _Why are you suddenly a dunce, Delphine?  Why does she have you squirming about so?_

I was no longer able to even _think_ when she stood opposite me.  Her body was so close that I was sure I could feel her body heat.  I could smell the alcohol on her breath.  She looked up at me through the lenses of her glasses.

“Yeah, my furniture.  I mean, I totally don’t mind eating… on the floor…” she murmured, her eyes heavy-lidded and demure, her voice low and sultry, “but it’s my roommate that owns half of it, so… I need to get it back for her.”

I gulped, and then turned around, picked up the Merlot and drank it straight from the bottle, desperate for the courage to say something that wasn’t French or stupid.  When I couldn’t drink any more, I wiped my mouth and offered the bottle to Cosima, who took it gladly.

“What… euh… what makes you think that it is here, in my apartment?”  _Excellent!  Well done, you managed one sentence.  Let’s keep going._

Cosima finished drinking from the bottle.

“Damn, that’s good stuff!”  She sniffed, considering her answer.  “Okay, well, come back out into the main room with me, yeah?  I’d love to stay and chat in this cosy bedroom, but honestly, I don’t think we’re at that stage for DMCs under the covers yet,” she mused as she walked back, her hand dipping into her back pocket as she went.

That only served to highlight the delightful curve of her derrière.  I let out a tiny moan, surprising myself.  I shook my head and followed her out of my room, one thought on my mind.

“Cosima, what is DMC?”  The brunette’s head snapped up to me when she heard me say her name, a heat in her eyes that I had never seen before. 

“It stands for ‘deep meaningful conversation’.”  Once again, she stepped closer to me in the living room, her proximity making my stomach perform acrobatics worthy of the Olympics.  “You know, conversations in which you pour your heart out to the other person.  Thoughts… worries…” she stood on her tiptoes, pressing her mouth against my ear, “desires…”

And then she was gone, replaced instead by a crumpled photo, the object that she had fished out from her back pocket.  Her voice, now returned to her normal timbre yet still slurred, came from behind the photo.  “I swear to Eru llúvatar that this is your apartment.  Am I right, or am I even more righter?”

I laughed at her words, but I took the picture from her hands.  It was undeniably a picture of my living room, just with even more furniture.  It was very confusing, but there was my dining table, there was my sofa, but there was _another_ dining table, _another_ sofa, and more chairs than I could even count in the small picture.  I looked at the open plan apartment around me.  The furniture was absolutely _not here_.

I turned the photo around to see some words scrawled in a black marker.

**Haha you tosser, let’s see how you like being unable to sit down for a week!**

Almost certainly, that was Sarah’s handwriting.  She had written enough notes notifying me of things we’d needed (and things of mine she’d finished in the fridge) for me to recognise it.

I looked up at Cosima, utterly bemused.  I couldn’t help but laugh nervously.  What had this girl done to get on the wrong side of Sarah, making her victim to one of her many over the top pranks?

Cosima seemed to understand why I was laughing, and she brought up her hands in her defence.

“No, no, it’s not for _me!_ My roommate is Rachel Duncan.  She and Sarah had an… altercation… of sorts a couple of days ago… Rachel is _royally_ pissed off, so I came in her place.  She would have been rude, I think.  To be fair, it has _totally_ been worth it,” she winked at me as she moved closer to me.  “I’ve seen Delphine Cormier’s ass,” she whispered, and something _happened_ in my body, something so inexplicable and nearly painful that my legs wobbled and struggled to keep my upright.

I gulped, and pulled my dressing gown tighter around me.  I whispered quietly back to her, not sure that I could have mustered any more volume.

“That is… _entirely_ your fault… for walking in on me… when I was _clearly_ in a vulnerable state.”

Cosima smelt of alcohol, but she also smelt of oranges.  My stomach grumbled at the smell, and I leant closer to get another whiff of the scent, but my head ended up in the dip of her neck, my nose pressed against the soft flesh I found there.  My ears only just picked up her words that she mumbled into them.  I felt the rumble throughout my entire body.

“You know, despite the fact that I’ve never spoken to you before, I think you need to know how much I like you…” she trailed off, taken by surprise by the feeling of my teeth biting her neck.  A flame lit inside me at her words.  I moved my head up, my lips tracing the curve of her ear.

With a confidence borne of intense arousal, I responded.

“Despite the fact that I’ve never been able to say a single word to you before, I think you need to know how much I have lusted after you for months on end,” I moaned, and she groaned in turn.  Before either of us could really stop ourselves, I had lifted Cosima up onto my kitchen counter and was biting her with careless abandon, and Cosima’s hands were in my hair, pulling my face closer to her, encouraging the deep red marks I left after sucking at her skin with a passion I finally released after months of nervous desire.  We were both making small noises of appreciation, and I noted that this was the most I had used my voice box around her.  I smiled at the thought.  I was stroking the skin under her shirt when the door to my apartment opened with a crash. 

We both turned to the door at the same time, glaring angrily.

At the sight of Sarah looking at us both, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, we parted from each other as slowly as we could. 

Sarah grunted, lifting her chin in a slightly aggressive greeting to Delphine, and then nodded at Cosima.  The dreadlocked girl spoke up, the last few moments making her slightly sharper than she had been before.

“Sarah… where’s my furniture?” she asked half-heartedly, not at all wanting to commit to this line of enquiry.

Sarah snorted.

“Like I’m gonna tell you.  Piss off, Cos.  Rachel can go suck it.  She isn’t getting her shit back til she’s had to eat on the floor like a dog for at least a week, ‘kay?”  She disappeared off to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Cosima seemed content to leave it at that.  She turned her attention back to me, pulling at my shoulders until I was standing with my hips between her knees. 

I was just about to take off her top when we heard a fantastically loud crash and a curse come from Sarah’s room.

Sighing, I moved away from Cosima again, and we both walked to her room to see what the problem was.

I opened the door.

We were met with the sight of a room _full_ of furniture; a massive sofa balanced on its side, a _dining table_ balanced upside down on Sarah’s bed, and more chairs than I was able to really count, and Sarah herself, trapped under an office chair that had attacked her from above.

“Oh shite,” Sarah moaned, slowly getting back up.  Cosima grinned.

“Busted.”

**Author's Note:**

> Translations:
> 
>  _Excusez-moi... La nudité est seulement pour les meilleures amis:_ Excuse me... Nudity is for best friends only.
> 
> _Qu’est-ce que vous avez vu?_ : What did you see?
> 
> If they are incorrect (which is highly likely at midnight), please feel free to slap me awake and point me in the right direction.


End file.
